Egypt Votes: A Primer on the Arab World's First Free Presidential Election

CAIRO, Egypt -- What should we look for after the votes are
counted in Egypt this week -- or rather, if
the ballot box contents are counted, rather than trashed or illicitly
augmented?

Once Egyptians go to the polls on Wednesday to choose a
president, no matter what happens next, the transition from impermeable
autocracy to something hopefully more accountable will move to another, more
clarifying, stage.

The integrity of the process will be the first hurdle. And
if Egyptian monitors and political parties endorse the count and the turnout is
significant, as expected, the results will be the second.

Because opinion polling in Egypt has not yet had a semblance
of accuracy and since there is no precedent for a contested presidential
election in Egypt, there are simply no meaningful metrics to handicap the race.
Many Egypt watchers have picked likely front-runners, but this is nothing more
than educated guesswork. My
own prediction is that the top three finishers are likely to be Amr Mousa,
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Mohamed Morsy, and that whichever of the two
Islamists makes it to the runoff will win.

But this is little more than high-level gut-work, based on a
reading of the parliamentary election results earlier this year, Egypt's only
real election since 1952; an assessment of public opinion and emerging political
thought; haphazard street interviews; and the size and quality of crowds at
electoral rallies.

The electorate is fragmented, with at least five candidates
have attracted significant followings. As a result, that many or more could
poll in the double digits. The field is wide open, especially because of the
fluid nature of political allegiances in this period of transition. The major constituencies
will be split among rival candidates from the same camp: Islamists,
revolutionaries, law-and-order nationalists, liberals.

Men sitting at a café during the four-and-half-hour
presidential debate a week ago told me they supported both the Muslim
Brotherhood and leading secular candidate, Amr Moussa, who is presenting
himself as a sort of elder statesman. Some told me they were attracted
simultaneously to Hamdeen Sabahi, the secular Nasserist revolutionary favorite,
as well as Ahmed Shafiq, the revanchist retired general and Mubarak's last
prime minister. That's a sign of emerging politics, as voters begin the complex
process of ranking their own preferences. How important is a candidate's
connection to the old regime? Position on law-and-order versus reform?
Stringency on clerical regulation of civil law? Strategy on reviving Egypt's
moribund economy?

None of the choices are clear-cut, and none of the popular
candidates has an uncomplicated constellation of views. For instance, the most
Islamist candidate, the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, is more rigid in his
religious views and less sophisticated in his economic ideas than other senior
Brotherhood leaders. And the only secular candidate who supported the Tahrir
Revolution from the beginning, Hamdeen Sabahi, is also an unreconstructed Nasserist,
which is a bit like campaigning in America today as a third-party reformer who
wants to bring back Communism.

The top two finishers will go to runoff, to be held on June
16 and 17, which will determine Egypt's president. Here are a few of the possible
outcomes and their likely implications.

Felool runoff: Moussa vs Shafiq. This is the worst of the plausible
scenarios, but it's possible. The felool,
or "remnants" (meaning leftovers from the old, Hosni Mubarak regime), could
prevail. Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister, could finish atop the polls
with Ahmed Shafiq, the ex-general who, during his campaign, promised that he
would never let a minority group of protesters overthrow a president backed by
millions. Never mind that Mubarak said the same thing in his final weeks in
power. In this case, Islamist voters and secular revolutionaries would both be
likely to take to the streets, convinced that all the political achievements of
the Tahrir uprising were under threat. We could expect a tense power struggle
with lots of public uproar, and potentially even more uncertainty and violence
than we've seen over the last year.

Islamist runoff:
Morsi vs Aboul Fotouh. The Brotherhood's Morsi could finish at the top
along with the former Brother, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. In this case, we
could expect a surge of conditional popular support for Aboul Fotouh, the more
conciliatory and moderate of the two -- but we should also expect the military,
some of the wealthy magnates, and the anti-Islamist secular constituency to
bristle and polarize. The non-Islamist politicians might pursue obstructionist
tactics, in the belief that their secular principles are under attack.

Glass half full.
In this scenario, the runoff features what I call "consensus" candidates, liked
by some and acceptable to many, even with reservations. These candidates elicit
intense dislike from a minority of Egyptians, but a majority would be willing
to live with them. On this list, I'd include Aboul Fotouh, Moussa, and Sabahi.
Of the likely outcomes, this is the best; it means that the new president would
be unlikely to face a public insurrection, and that he would be able to govern
with at least the grudging consent of the majority during the next phase of
Egypt's transition.

Wild card. Given
the unpredictability of the process and the split vote, the finalists could
include one or two unexpected faces. The revolutionary Sabahi could face Amr
Moussa, disenchanting those revolutionaries with an Islamist hue. The
reactionary ex-regime Shafiq could face the reactionary Islamist Morsi, leaving
a huge swathe of the electorate without a simpatico candidate. The ruling
generals could mistrust both finalists and organize a more concerted power grab.

Whichever two candidates make it to the run-off, the very
fact that a genuine presidential contest is taking place has irreversible
historic implications. Egypt is writing a new political history for itself, an
inevitably messy process. Any outcome (short of a Shafiq victory) will likely represent
a marked improvement from political life under Mubarak. And whatever the
results, the politicization of the electorate will continue, and the public is
unlikely to forfeit its newfound sense of ownership over the government.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Thanassis Cambanis is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a columnist at The Boston Globe.